There was a time when
things seemed they were going to happen. This
applies to almost everything, in this case the
subject is Brazilian garage rock. Acidente, "that
band that nobody knows but everyone have heard
of", was founded in 1978 in Rio by journalism
students and came some prominence in the
underground musical scene of Rio de Janeiro, but
later, as they launched their independent albums,
has been meticulously disinvented by the media,
along with many other bands in the same situation,
so that half a dozen or twenty minions could
occupy exclusively all available space and
therefore, without competitors, enjoy all the fame
and fortune that brief affair between the
Brazilian audience and rock had to offer.

There were
two bands with the same name Acidente, both
different in time and style, with nothing in
common except the name and the producer /
keyboardist. The second Acidente, created in 1989,
had a proposal of being primarily instrumental,
with progressive influences, and its work is well
documented on CD, such as the fusion that followed
from 2003, with old and new members keeping alive
the flame through sporadic releases. However, the
original Acidente, the first and only "Old ACA", remained
restricted to old vinyls - until now, when it's
celebrated 30 years of the group's first LP, "Guerra Civil".

Two garage
bands ("groups" as it was called then) gave rise
to Acidente. In "One Night Stand Band", formed in
1974, played Guto Rolim, Zeca Pereira and Paulo
Malária, doing a mixture of basic rock, ballads
and difficult themes to label. Meanwhile, Helio
"Scubi" Jenné and Raul Branco were making their
seventies

rock operas (which were never made
public) under the name Leviathan. The meeting of
Scubi with Raul and Mala in the Communication
School at UFRJ, in 1977, arose the ephemeral The
Merry Compadres of Windsor and in the
following year, Acidente finally debuted in a
troubled university festival in noble
grounds, where there were all the ingredients:
cries, turmoil, insults, vomiting. The Acidente
was officially launched, with its proposal, which
has changed substantially over the years, just
like its members.

The times that followed were
of intense creativity and Aça became an easy
presence in university hostels and night
rookeries, where his concerts attracted a small
crowd of rockers eager for something different and
authentic, to raise their spirits into
hallucinating trips and abstracted them for some
hours of the fact that they live a miserable Third
World dictatorship. Acidente used to make the mind
of his musicians and also of his fans.

Everything
was going well and a record seemed to be a natural
consequence, however as no label was interested
(for several years, the national catalog of rock
came down to three or four well known names), the
band's keyboardist pissed off and decided to
produce. The result of inexperience was the first
LP of an independent rock band from Rio de
Janeiro: "Guerra Civil",
which came out in June 1981. In the photo below,
the lineup of the time: Mala (keyboards, vocals),
Guto (Bass), Scubi (guitar, vocals), Zeca (drums)
and guitarist Fernando Sá (Samuca), who left the
band shortly after to start his own group. Because
then the public's demand for Brazilian rock was
becoming unstoppable for the meager investments
that were made by major labels of the music
industry, and new bands began to appear by the
dozens every day.

Acidente at Lemos
Cunha Theatre - 1981

With their
album in hands, the members of Acidente invested
with the extra function of publishers discovered
the truth: the doors of media, both printed and
electronic, were closed to the independents.
Almost every second or millimeter was priceless,
and all were already allotted (we wouldn't pay
anyway ...). "Guerra Civil"
faced an almost complete ignorance in the public
square was burned in protest, until a program
("Poeira e Country") of large audience by a Rio
radio (98 FM) became fascinated by the band song
"The Cowboy and the Debutant" and began to play it
every day, including placing it several times in
the 1st place. This was the summer of 1981 to
1982.

Immediatly thereafter, arose
online in its experimental phase, Fluminense FM,
"A Maldita" and played the album in its radio
programming several tracks incessantly. By the
time of Carnival "a Maldita" (the Damned) was the
great novelty among the young rockers of Rio and
Acidente had its chance of gold.

Like
something had to have gone terribly wrong (or you
wouldn't now be reading the liner notes of a
modest independent album), at that very moment,
while hundreds of neophytes popped up, ACA was
disbanded and so it was for months. To paraphrase
a candidate for governor at that time, the horse
has passed saddled
only once and Acidente did not rode it.

Acidente photo
collage

In this new
Land of Rock, Acidente was restructured and
returned to stages with a modified line up but to
find a time even harder for independents. The
Brazilian pop-rock had become a very profitable
business for some few feudal lords. When in
mid-1983 the band re-entered the studio to record
its 2nd vinyl, "Fim do Mundo" (End of
the World) (which would be called "Armed
Struggle") and ended up inadvertently as eponym of
another group), the lineup was already the usual
basic Mala, Zeca, Guto, Scubi. The effect was as
expected: a stone thrown into a dry lake.

Now, even those who gave rise to indie had already
entered the big dance. Do what? Life goes on. The
CD (at the time, a single with four songs) "Piolho",
of 1985, confirmed that Acidente had really been a
great idea - but for others to get along. A few
more musicians passed through the band, which in a
climate of growing discouragement still made some
gigs here and there, until that in 1987 the hammer
was hit: the time of the Acidente - that Acidente
- "had run its course".

At that point, the "Brazilian Rock" was
already a landscape dramatically different
from the one that motivated young musicians to
form their bands, and no one could imagine
that one day the rescue of those insolent
recordings would awaken interest, as is
evidenced by the fact you are with this CD in
hands.